


From Eden

by sunbeamsky



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: ...and then back to enemies and then eventually back to lovers, Canon Universe, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Gen, Post-Season/Series 01, and we’re not gonna meet the boys bc i say so, nobody dies in this one, will focus on shelby and toni but also the other relationships and characters as well
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbeamsky/pseuds/sunbeamsky
Summary: Leah is on the brink of discovery. Nora is just trying to keep the charade going as long as she can. Martha wants nothing more than to find that glimmer of hope once again. Rachel craves the feeling of being alive. Dot wants to take care of her new family. Fatin is scared to go back to her own. And, well, Shelby wants to know why Toni is ignoring her all of a sudden...and figure out if she believes what Leah has been insinuating all along.Picks up after the events of season one where nobody dies and Gretchen is desperate to finish out the experiment.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 9
Kudos: 109





	From Eden

**Author's Note:**

> the title comes from the hozier song “from eden” because as hellacious as the island was, it was sort of an eden too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this work is unbeta’d—i will go through and correct things as needed.

__

_**idealism sits prison, chivalry fell on it's sword  
innocence died screaming, honey ask me i should know  
i slithered here from eden just to sit outside your door** _

* * *

The room was sterile. Concrete walls like that of a prison cell and a small window that overlooked another slab of concrete. Caught between the grey stone sludge and a brown mildew, as if they were underground in a series of sewer tunnels like that cartoon. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh to be one of them and not a sixteen year old nobody whose own parents signed her up to be castaway on a deserted island in order to drain all the life out of her system. To make room for forgiveness, redemption, love. They told her it would make room in her heart to love.

In some ways they were right, pathetically right. But thatlove was not some other repressed and blond-haired trophy husband. That love was the seven other victims of the most tragic weekend retreat known to man. The subjects, lab rats, worms on a hook anticipating the catch. Mostly Toni. Almost completely Toni.

She didn’t know yet that her weekend getaway was a betrayal. It was still a freak accident as she stared through the window at the mildew. -

“Shelby?” 

She must have missed the knock on her door—perhaps it had never come at all—but the guy with glasses entered her room and there was something instantly alarming about his expression. Usually he had this fake empathetic aura, an insincerity that Shelby knew too well. This time it was deeper, ingrained in all his wrinkles somewhere between concerned and smug. His hand was held out but not for Shelby to take, to guide her out of her holding cell.

“Right this way.”

“I already answered all of your questions, sir,” she explained as he guided her through the hallway in the same direction he had in the past.

“Yes, you did. Your account of the events was very helpful, but this time I’m not taking you for questioning”

“Where are you taking me?”

This time his hand pressed against her back and it felt like a torch. Her stomach shot out like a scared cat but she tightened her gut and kept walking. She was momentarily glad she didn’t have any hair and could see every inch of her peripheries. 

Maybe today was the day she would be able to see the others. 

To see Toni.

To go home? Surely her parents would be arriving soon. It had been almost a week since they had been rescued.

All the hallways looked the same—narrow, dark,and hopeless—but she knew the route beneath her feet as if she had walked it a hundred times. Hunting had taught her that. To track footprints and scat, trails and hideouts so she knew where to run and where to tiptoe. This was not the way to the questioning room. Shelby hadn’t been anywhere else yet so she mapped each turn in her mind so she could run if she needed to. 

They passed no exit signs or windows.

“Here we are,” he announced suddenly, stopped them both before two metal doors.

Shelby couldn’t hear anything coming from the other side of the doors so she began to plan her escape. He didn’t look athletic and Shelby knew that even with a hurt foot she could probably out run him. He didn’t know how much it had already healed since they arrived. She had been practicing standing on it when it was dark and the cameras couldn’t see her.

“Shelby?”

That wasn’t his voice. It wasn’t another isolated cell. The doors were wide open. 

“Martha!”

Before Shelby could even comprehend the room before her, Martha had her arms surrounding Shelby in the tightest hug she had ever felt. 

“We were so worried about you! I mean after the shark, there was just so much blood and everything happened so fast...”

“Marty,” Toni interrupted from somewhere beyond Martha’s shoulder. Martha let go but kept her arms on Shelby’s shoulders as if it would anchor them both into place. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” chimed in Rachel’s voice. Martha took a step back so Rachel could take the second hug. 

This hug was different. Martha had held Shelby up, a firm and protective hug. Rachel melted against her skin, clinging to Shelby as if she thought they both would fly away. Shelby’s arms reached around Rachel without even thinking twice about her crutches. When Nora saw that fin in the water all anybody could think about was Rachel.

“I haven’t slept at all. Not a single minute, I was so ducking scared,” Rachel admitted. “It shouldn’t have been you.”

“It’s okay, Rachel. Just a slice, nothing serious.”

“You were unconscious,” Rachel whispered, her voice breaking in a way Rachel had never allowed it to on the island. 

Shelby nodded. She knew Rachel well enough to know that sweet nothings would be of no comfort. She just needed to let Rachel feel her fear, feel her relief, and see that everyone was okay.

As okay as they could be.

Rachel didn’t cry but Shelby let her calm her breathing against her neck, running her fingertips up and down Rachel’s back like her mom used to do when she was feel sick or had bad cramps. She hadn’t thought warmly of her mom in a long time. It felt strange.

“We’ve all been really worried about you,” Nora added from somewhere else in the room. 

Shelby drew her own face from Rachel’s shoulder to see the other seven in a cluster around them. Nora put a hand on Rachel’s back and gently drew her to the side when her breathing was back to normal. Shelby looked around at the girls and bit down on her lip to stop whatever it was from flying out of her mouth: a scream, a cry, a laugh, an exhale. 

“Have you all been together this whole time?”

“No. We’ve all been alone until now,” Dot answered.

Shelby let her gaze fall to Toni. It wasn’t met. Toni instantly looked to her feet. Shelby tried not to let it hurt.

“Where are we?” She asked, wondering how much the others had already had a chance to discuss without her.

“No fucking clue. Probably somewhere far from Hawaii,” Fatin groaned, but smiled warmly enough that it almost felt like a hug.

“Peru,” Leah announced as if it were obvious.

“What?”

“We’re on a small island near Peru,” she explained, though none of the dots seemed to be connecting. Nora stiffened a bit but it might have been from trying to keep Rachel standing tall.

“Peru’s emergency number is 105.”

“Does it look like anybody has a phone?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry, I’m just hungry,” Rachel sighed, relaxing against Nora a bit. They were so predictable sometimes. Nothing about their sisterhood reminder Shelby of her little sister.

“Let’s take a step back. Leah, how do you know that this is Peru?” Dot asked.

“Agent Young.”

“Wait? One of the detectives told you we were in Peru?” Fatin questioned. “Why? He refused to tell me shit.”

“Well he fucking told me we’re in Peru, okay?”

“And you believed him?”

Dot was between them, just like she always was on the island. Just like they always were. Shelby wondered how much of the blame she put on the island was justified. Did the island make them crazy or did it justify all the crazy that was already inside of them. She knew the answer, in the end, she just didn’t always like it.

Toni still wouldn’t look at her. She was sitting at the end of a cafeteria-style table, a few feet from Rachel and Nora but on the outskirts of everybody else. Shelby sat down next to her.

“You’re quiet.”

“You’re bald.”

Shelby’s fingers caressed the back of her neck, brushed lightly against the grain of her buzzed scalp. She really didn’t mind having all of her hair gone. At first, she felt like a stranger, but after a few moments she felt more like herself than she ever had in that stupid pony tail. 

“Do you have a window? I mean, in your room here,” she asked, unsure how to make everything between them feel real, feel as normal as it could. 

“Look, I really don’t want to do this. What happened on the island can stay on the island, alright?”

Toni stood up and promptly joined the chaos about how they ended up in Peru instead of an island near Hawaii and how they might go about getting a phone. 

“Our parents are coming for us!”

“It’s been a fucking week, Nora! Where the hell are they? You can fly around the world in like a day on some jets. We’ve been in this creepy facility for like a week and nothing. Don’t you find that even a bit suspicious? Right when we need serious medical attention?”

“Leah, just breathe. Deep breath through your nose.”

“Shut up, Fatin! And don’t fucking touch me. And you! Nora, how convenient that your little journal disappeared just in time for us to be rescued. When do you wanna tell everybody about the hole, huh?”

“Leah, breathe!”

“What is she talking about, Nora?”

“Just take a breath.”

“What the hell is going on?!”

“She fucking knows! She knows!”

“What the hell do you think she knows?!”

“Ladies!” The voice of Agent Faber coated the room in a thick silence, a heavy quiet that never occurred on the island even in the dead of night. Shelby had forgotten how the earth sounded in silence. In the room her head had ever been as quiet as this. “I need everybody to take a seat, we have some critical updates for you.”

They all sat around the table without being asked twice, even Leah. Toni had taken the seat farthest from Shelby. That one stung. 

“Where are our parents?” Rachel asked first, quietly but far from calm. It was the bottle up anger that reminded Shelby of the Rachel from the first week or so. Not the Rachel she knew now. Shelby understood the anger though, saw it like a thunderstorm inside of Leah every damn day. 

“How did we end up in Peru?” Dot added before he could begin to answer. His eyes widen and he gave a meticulously feigned expression of confusion.

“Peru? We’re not in Peru.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. Maybe it was stupid to believe Leah, but Shelby knew a liar when she saw one. “We found you on a small island near Oahu. Unfortunately, the island we found you on is filled with an extremely dangerous species of shellfish that is life threatening to humans. It’s the reason we have had to quarantine you all. The doctors have informed us that you should be safe to interact with others as long as you never actually consumed the shellfish. You all didn’t consume any shellfish, right?”

“What the hell?”

“Leah! Actually, Agent Young we all ate some clams that gave us pretty wicked food poisoning. Could those be the shellfish?”

“You’re kidding?”

Shelby could tell the reaction was fake, forced, practiced. Why was he so surprised that they might have eaten clams when they were stuck on a island with no food.

“We’ll have to continue your quarantining at least until our medical team is able to release you back into the general public.”

“What about our families?”

“I can’t go back into that fucking room!”

“Relax, ladies. Relax. Now that we know you’ve all eaten them, I guess it’s safe for you to quarantine as a group. If you’d like, of course. We just want you to be comfortable after all.”

What a fucking joke.


End file.
